


Rolling the Dice

by Queue



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, commentfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Commentfic written for serialkarma in my own LJ (qe2.livejournal.com), 29 November 2004), on the prompt "RayK, pool hall, smoky."</p></blockquote>





	Rolling the Dice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serialkarma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serialkarma/gifts).



Ray isn't quite sure how he got here.

The Goat's in the parking lot - he can see it even through the layer of grime on the pool hall's front window and his own glasses-free squint - so that's the answer to the obvious question. Which Ray probably could've figured out on his own eventually anyway, all things considered. Because Ray doesn't fucking do public transport, even when - maybe especially when - he's planning on a night of bad beer and good pool, since lot of the time what that leads to is an offer he'd just as soon not refuse and when he goes there with someone - with anyone, almost - he likes to be able to leave whenever he wants to. He _has_ to be able to do that. Otherwise, deal's off. No dice, no sale, sayonara, baby, go find another queer cop to blow you in the back or the alley or the front seat of your car or the doorway of your house. Ray may be drunk off his ass - which, yeah, he usually is, he kind of has to be for this to work for him at all - but he made that mistake once, that not-driving-himself mistake, and had to call in sick three days running and wait for the bruises to fade. So he doesn't go there any more, not quite.

And okay, the pool's not that much of a surprise. Joey Romanczuk taught him when they were both, like, 12, playing around in Joey's rich aunt's basement rec room, looking for something else to do besides jerk each other off again, and he's kept his hand in since then. Plus the place fucking reeks of smoke, the air so thick with it Ray wouldn't be able to see anything outside the pool of light over the table he's using even if he hadn't been putting away draft Bud for the better part of three hours, so when Ray bums a cigarette off first one guy and then another it's like it's hardly cheating at all, because these aren't his smokes and anyway he's already inhaled enough nicotine and whatever else to make his lungs black, so what's one more gonna do to him? Ray hates the idea that he's got a tobacco jones - that's a junkie thing, that's not him, he's got it under control - but once in a while can't hurt, he figures.

But that still doesn't explain why he comes _here_. See, here's the thing that Ray can't quite figure. Parking lot, check; pool hall, check; smoke, check. But why _this_ parking lot, _this_ pool hall, this _particular_ smoke? How'd he wind up here?

Because Ray knows this neighborhood, real well. Ray's walked the streets around this place an awful lot of times in his life, in little-kid sneakers and in combat boots and in those shitty, shiny uniform shoes before he busted out of his blues and made detective. This is Ray's home, his fucking _patch_ , where he did most of the first hard parts of growing up. And it's where his cousins and his former friends live, where the first guy he ever blew and the first guy who ever fucked him hang out on the corner and compare notes on the last ugly tie their wives made them wear, where all the secret pieces of his past are one degree of separation from being broken out into the open and blowing up into his face. The next guy he thinks about picking up could be someone Joey went to school with, and after that even driving himself might not be enough to get him out of there whole.

And yet he's here, again, just like last night and last week and last month.

Ray slides the cue between his fingers, chalks the tip blue over and over, shoots and sinks and scores, and all the time he wonders:

how did he get here...and when are they gonna find him?

**Author's Note:**

> Commentfic written for serialkarma in my own LJ (qe2.livejournal.com), 29 November 2004), on the prompt "RayK, pool hall, smoky."


End file.
